Storyteller Marc
Levitt runs writing and storytelling workshops earlier this week with 'third
culture kids' and their parents at the Istanbul International Community School
and at the Hilton. He helps young global nomads gain a vocabulary to talk about
what it is like identifying with multiple cultures

DAMARIS KREMIDA
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News

His job is to
recite stories to kids around the world so they can tell him their own. But
performer and storyteller Marc Levitt's audience is different: Most of the children
he encounters have gone through so many countries, time zones, cultures, cuisines
and languages they aren't sure what or who they are.

In a world where
job opportunities across the world uproot families, more and more children end
up spending a sizeable part of their lives away from the country written on
their passport. These children are called third culture kids ? often pegged
as TCKs or 3CKs or Global Nomads ? because they deal with a culture of their
own; one foot in the country of origin and one in the host country or countries
where they live.

Prior to World
War II the majority of TCKs came mostly from missionary families. Now TCKs are
mostly children of business, government and military families. Ruth Hill Useem
was the first to study TCKs in the 1960s.

Sociologist David
Pollock, a prominent name in the study of this social subgroup, describes a
TCK as a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental
years outside the parents' culture. The TCK builds relationships with several
cultures, while not having full ownership of any.

Levitt, however,
said that in his mind the third culture phenomenon is something broader than
those definitions. He expands it to adults and other groups as well.

"I see it
as something larger… For me it is the hybridization of culture and trying to
figure out who you are and how you fit in," said Levitt. "So I've
included immigrants, mixed marriages and bi-racial parents and I look at what's
it is like to grow up with seemingly conflicting heritages." His own parents
emigrated from Russia, and the storyteller said he has always been interested
in immigration issues and how people move from one place to another. In the
United States a little Buddha sits on his mother's microwave; a gift from bagel
shop down the road, owned by a chemist from Thailand. Levitt said he is a big
proponent of diversity in all its forms.

Through storytelling
and writing workshops, Levitt helps children by giving them the vocabulary to
talk about their own diversity. He sees it as "the liquidity of identity;
dealing with multiple identities in the self. We are all many facets of ourselves,"
he said, and "third culture kids are a physical manifestation of what we
all carry around inside."

In his writing
workshops for kids he encourages them to talk and write about the subtleties
of what they know; what it is like, say, leaving, coming and transitioning.
"What do you call yourself? What is the one sacred thing you always take
with you? What is it like to say goodbye or come back to your home culture?"
he asks.

Levitt encourages
parents to talk with TCKs about what it is like for them to adapt to another
culture, "so kids can feel that they have permission to talk about it,"
he said. "Kids don't have the language to talk about it," but once
others share, they start opening up, he explained. Through the workshops parents
and children explore the acquisition of language and culture and how "they
change their body language and clothes to fit in," or how they acquire
a new language and culture. These things are part of an active adaptation process,
he said.

As a result of
their unique lives TCKs "have a flexibility and openness that's larger
than kids living in that society," said Levitt. "They can talk to
adults and are more comfortable with and understand differences."

The storyteller
has created a Web site devoted to all who "are struggling with, happy about,
bemused and confused about the issue of 'identity' in a world where national,
ethnic, racial boundaries are becoming more and more porous and open to question,"
at www.thirdculturestories.com.

"These kids
have unique experiences and need to be validated and to write about them,"
he said.